Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Trap

The offside rule was added to football to discourage a boring pattern of play where a striker would wait at the opposition's goalmouth and his teammates would lob long balls forwards to him. The offside rule introduced a whole new pattern of play called the offside trap whereby a defender could linger at the back and lure the opposing striker forwards, the defender could then charge forward and invalidate a pass forward to the striker.

My band have accidentally introduced a kind of "Indie-Rock trap" into our shows. The last couple of times we have played have been at a wedding and a dinner dance. Both functions had a huge range of ages in the audience and were slightly formal. We have started putting a clump of 60s songs early in the show which the older guests can enjoy. The older people are much less self concious about dancing, and they don't wait to see if they recognise the song, they just start swaying about as soon as they hear the beat.

At both of the last couple of shows we have moved away from the 60s stuff with a Kasabian song from the mid noughties called L.S.F. The song starts with drums, and although it's a fairly contemporary drum'n'bass type beat, the old folk just start swaying away, hoping that they'll recognise the tune when it starts. When the bassline starts the younger people know exactly what we're playing and get up and dance. The manners of the old folk however are so good that they don't dare leave the floor untill after the song has finished and you get this wonderful scene with younger drunker people dancing energetically and posing amongst uncomfortable looking pairs of old folk.

At the dinner dance the Lord Mayor of Saltash and the (supprisingly hot) mayoress got up and danced (still wearing their chains of office), but sadly we couldn't lure them into the Inde-Rock Trap.